ResponseTime Visual Factory is an MES system that gives you the simple visualisation you need to fully understand what is happening right now on the shop-floor. As a suite of modules you can choose just those that are relevant for your business.

Created to implement the 'Lean' visual factory concept on an ongoing basis, it uses similar simple 'traffic light' indicators and intuitive displays. The real-time feedback allows immedate visibility of the effect of problems or progress to reinforce good practice and a positive change culture.

This MES system integrates into your existing ERP and SCADA systems to provide an immediate visual picture of progress and status for the entire factory or site.

The visualisation shows a clear picture of what is happening as it occurs giving you that vital warning of problems. The analysis tools exploit the history data to allow trend analysis over time to give important insight into chronic issues.

Available as a stand-alone option, the Metrics module collects and analyzes those important metrics eg. OEE, utilisation, downtime, scrap etc. Results of manual input and real-time monitoring can be examined over time. Wasted time spent gathering statistics is removed allowing you to concentrate on improvement. Just this module alone can make a big impact on improving your factory and sustaining that improvement.

Creating a people culture of positive change and breaking down hierachical/departmental barriers is a vital element of the 'Lean' approach and this is actively supported by ResponseTime Visual Factory with operator skills tracking, performance monitoring and collaboration tools for team working.

The system integrates with your existing ERP/MRP system to exploit the existing data and add to it. Transactions can be automatically initiated to move progress data into the ERP system or APS scheduling package such as Preactor to update the master schedule.

Bill of Materials management is enhanced with change management tools to track and react to design changes automatically.

Kanban flows can be modelled and managed electronically both within the organisation and to outside organisations. Changes and tuning of Kanban designs can be easily implemented and can exploit the system metrics.

Alerts and actions can be defined to automate the response to specific conditions and issue messages by email, SMS or fax

Collaboration tools for sharing team documents and working in product teams are built in and can the personalised to the team. The operators skills library allows easy tracking and encouragement of personal development amongst the workforce. The highly visual operator performance information encorages and underpins improvement targets.

The 'building block' approach allows even the smallest manufacturer to take advantage of those functions that are relevant. As requirements grow then additional blocks can be switched on and added in.